The present invention relates to a device and a method for optimizing determining recording regions and, in particular, to a device and a method for establishing one or several recording regions from an image region such that they cover the total number of all the recording regions of all the objects in the image region.
The selective selection of recording regions serving to cover all the objects in an image region is of great importance. Examples of application may, for example, be found in computer-assisted microscopy. Here, objects are localized in recordings of small magnification in a first step and approached again and recorded at high magnification in a second step. The problem arising is that the image sector available in the higher magnification is not sufficient for detecting all the objects found in the detection step using a single recording. Consequently, it is necessary to do recordings at several positions. One way of covering all the objects by different recordings would be doing a separate recording for each object. However, such a procedure would be highly inefficient since every recording entails time-consuming steps. A step of recording includes time-consuming focusing, approaching the position and the actual image recording using a camera. Additionally, memory resources may have to be made available for each one of the images recorded and the great number of images recorded would correspondingly necessitate a large amount of memory resources. Consequently, it is desirable to keep the number of recording regions necessitated which cover all the objects of an image region as small as possible.
Covering as many objects of an image region as possible using a single recording has already been attempted in known technology, i.e. trying to establish one or several recording regions, wherein a recording region may be recorded each using a single recording by a camera in the magnification desired. Different heuristic methods for optimizing recording or covering regions, as are exemplarily illustrated in documents [7], [8], [4], [5] and [2], can be found in known technology.
However, one problem not solved by known technology is how the number of recording regions, i.e., in the end, the number of recordings at high magnification taken by a camera, can be kept as small as possible and how determining these recording regions may be performed as quickly as possible, i.e. as efficiently as possible, using the least possible computing resources.